Bluetooth is an international open standard that allows devices to wirelessly communicate with each other. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that allows Bluetooth enabled devices such as computers, cell phones, keyboards and headphones to establish connections without using wires or cables to couple the devices to each other. Bluetooth is currently incorporated into numerous commercial products including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, keyboards, headsets and printers, with more products being constantly added to the list of Bluetooth enabled devices.
The Bluetooth SBC is a low computational complexity audio coding system designed to provide high quality audio at moderate bit rates to Bluetooth enabled devices. The Bluetooth SBC system utilizes a cosine modulated filterbank, for example, for analysis and synthesis. The filterbank may be configured for 4 subbands or 8 subbands, for example. The subband signals may be quantized using a dynamic bit allocation scheme and block adaptive pulse code modulation (PCM) quantization. The number of bits available and the number of bits used for quantization may vary, thereby making the overall bit-rate of the SBC system adjustable. This is advantageous for use in wireless applications where the available wireless bandwidth for audio, and the maximum possible bit-rate may vary over time.
The Bluetooth community has developed specifications that define how to use streaming audio over a Bluetooth link. This opens up Bluetooth technology to a whole new class of audio devices, such as wireless stereo headsets, wireless speakers, and wireless portable MP3 players just to name a few. With the introduction of new Bluetooth specifications for streaming audio, new Bluetooth products such as wireless stereo headsets and wireless file streaming applications are becoming a reality. Wireless applications require solutions that are increasingly low power in order to extend battery life and provide a better end user experience. With existing systems, the computational requirements of high fidelity audio coding may make it cost prohibitive and challenging to add features such as streaming music to wireless devices.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.